Scientists from Rice University, Baylor College of Medicine and other institutions are using synthetic biology to capture elusive, short-lived snippets of DNA that healthy cells produce on their way to becoming cancerous.

Millions of human cells are constantly dividing to repair tissue damage and ensure continuity. This is one of the most complex cellular processes, and in order for it to be successful, cells must produce a copy of their genetic ...

Researchers from the Institut Jacques Monod (CNRS/University of Paris Diderot), the Institute of Biology of the Ecole Normale Supérieure (ENS/CNRS/Inserm), and the University of Bristol, have described for the first time ...

Washington State University researchers have mapped the damage of ultraviolet radiation on individual units of DNA, opening a new avenue in the search for how sunlight causes skin cancer and what might be done to prevent ...

A new technology can read the order (sequence) of the "letters" making up DNA code with enough accuracy to reveal how bacteria use high-speed evolution to defeat antibiotics. That is the finding of a study led by researchers ...

DNA repair

DNA repair refers to a collection of processes by which a cell identifies and corrects damage to the DNA molecules that encode its genome. In human cells, both normal metabolic activities and environmental factors such as UV light and Radiation can cause DNA damage, resulting in as many as 1 million individual molecular lesions per cell per day. Many of these lesions cause structural damage to the DNA molecule and can alter or eliminate the cell's ability to transcribe the gene that the affected DNA encodes. Other lesions induce potentially harmful mutations in the cell's genome, which affect the survival of its daughter cells after it undergoes mitosis. Consequently, the DNA repair process is constantly active as it responds to damage in the DNA structure.

The rate of DNA repair is dependent on many factors, including the cell type, the age of the cell, and the extracellular environment. A cell that has accumulated a large amount of DNA damage, or one that no longer effectively repairs damage incurred to its DNA, can enter one of three possible states:

The DNA repair ability of a cell is vital to the integrity of its genome and thus to its normal functioning and that of the organism. Many genes that were initially shown to influence lifespan have turned out to be involved in DNA damage repair and protection. Failure to correct molecular lesions in cells that form gametes can introduce mutations into the genomes of the offspring and thus influence the rate of evolution.